Think Geek

Where do you stand?

thinkgeek — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 21:05:00 +0000

Geeks are nerds that almost get along and function non-awkwardly in real life. Geeks can’t help but associate with nerds because of common interests but often appear embarassed by the behavior of their nerd counterpart. The truth is that they are ashamed of their own nerdiness and try to hide it from their real-life friends. In short, geeks are nerds who have a semi-social life.

How to differentiate a nerd from a GEEK:

True geeks specialize in a particular programming language whereas the nerd will claim top-knowledge in multiple computer related topics from hardware to doing your mom.
A geek doesn’t have to use a website to speak in binary or leet. The nerd’s best friend is Nick Ciscke (http://nickciske.com/tools/binary/php)
True geeks no longer live at home after college, they just use their parents to do their laundrey. Nerds will never see daylight.
Reads Sci-fi that isn’t completely useless. EXAMPLE: geeks read “Hitchhikers Guide to the Multiverse.” While nerds still read “Hitchikers Guide to the Universe.”

e-me @ vijaymateti@gmail.com

thinkgeek — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:07:00 +0000

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The Onion Router HOWTO

thinkgeek — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 18:00:00 +0000

My quest for freedom and anonymity have take me to the world of similar people who been working around this since decades. One such great concept is TOR – The Onion Router which is quite reliable and provides high anonymity and many more tunneling features. Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features. Here our college network is pretty restricted, where we are not allowed to scan external ports. No freedom to use FTP, no IRC acess, no multimedia streaming and impossible to connect to CVS repositories. I would assure that if you too are in such a bizare sutuation this one is for you.

Tor is a Secound generation Onion Router used for tunneling the data through the third part proxies. Its not any hacking kit you can rely on its service. Its based on good ethics. TOR provies both client and server features. If you wish to contribute your bandwidth for promoting the Onion Routing you can even configure your system to the Tor server. Here I discuss the basic and advanced features of Tor and howto setup it on Ubuntu “Breezy Badger”. Especially for those people who find impossible to connect to CVS to acess their projects at GNU or SAROVAR or whatever It could help you out. Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy. For all those people who like to remain anonymous and stay away from loggers this could be last resort.

Every packet you send in and out have signatures and headers which can help trace you out the location and Identity. So lets see how this tor thing works in protecting your Identity from the remote host. Tor is a distributed anonymous network which routes your data randomly and encryptedthough a list of hosts from the Cleint to the remote host. The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you—and then periodically erasing your footprints. This figurews ilustrate how Tor works.
The Alice ‘s Tor client connect to the directory server and get the list of Tor nodes and prepates how the routing is to be done . No one ever know the path followed bt the packets inside the Tor network.
The client software sends the pcakets to the Tor nodes encrypted and the data is routed on to many tor nodes and finally reaches the remote system. The path won’t remain constant Its purly random from one remote host to other thus providing maximum anonymity.

To setup tor on Ubuntu you need to follow the following steps on root terminal
Setup the http proxy address, port and authentication details.

root@zionmainframe:~# export http_proxy=”http://user:password@172.16.16.2:3128″

After enabling all the apt-get repositories at /etc/apt/source.list install the tor by executing following comand.

root@zionmainframe:~# apt-get install tor

After the installation tor starts to run on 9050 port on default. Here tor doesn’t have inbuit socks server. Its based on other third party socks server privoxy. In order to get privoxy execute the following comand

root@zionmainframe:~# apt-get install privoxy

Add this line on the to of the config file of privoxy

root@zionmainframe:~# vi /etc/privoxy/config
forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 . (add this line on the top of the config file including the dot its important)

Add following lines on to the tor config file torrc

root@zionmainframe:~# vi /etc/tor/torrc

HttpProxy 172.16.16.2:3128
HttpProxyAuthenticator user:password (whatever your user authetication details)

Restart the services

root@zionmainframe:~# invoke-rc.d tor restart
root@zionmainframe:~# invoke-rc.d privoxy restart

To set your browser to socks proxy set http and ssl proxy to 127.0.0.1 and port 8118.

Contd………………

Linus calls GNOME a ‘interface Nazis’

thinkgeek — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 09:55:00 +0000

I was not expecting such a comment from such a Great Geek, showing his hard feelings towards GNOME a real free desktop from GNU. He made a commnet on some Interface mail on GNOME discussion mail. GNOME is my favourite desktop enivormant. Its clean its fast and its quite stable. It don’t have any thing rivalryits a compleate GNU desktop. Linus Trovalds was refering that GNOME developers are “too confusing to the user” and its interface as”interface Nazis”This has resulted in a heated debate between fans of rival Linux desktop environments. These were the exact comments made by him

I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

This “users are idiots, and are confused by functionality” mentality of
Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will
use it. I don’t use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long
since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do.

Please, just tell people to use KDE.

Linus

The reason I don’t use Gnome: every single other window manager I know of
is very powerfully extensible, where you can switch actions to different
mouse buttons. Guess which one is not, because it might confuse the poor
users? Here’s a hint: it’s not the small and fast one.

And when I tell people that, they tend to nod, and have some story of
their own why they had a feature they used to use, but it was removed
because it might have been confusing.

Same with the file dialog. Apparently it’s too “confusing” to let users
just type the filename. So gnome forces you to do the icon selection
thing, never mind that it’s a million times slower

Linus

Do you agree with him?

Preview: GNOME 2.14

thinkgeek — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:57:00 +0000

GNOME 2.14 testing is going on rapidly. Its goign to be out very soon may be on 15th of march. Its going to be shipped along with Ubuntu “Dapper Drake”. Many new features and more polish, developers have been working around the clock to squeeze more performance out of the most commonly used applications and libraries. Applications are made almost 10 times speeder my going for GSlice libs. Many new features like advanced desktop search, deskbar, notifications and cool display gonna be there. You may look into the review given by one of the core developer of GNOME >>> Click Here

Just Say No to Microsoft

thinkgeek — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:23:00 +0000

This is amazing book from No Starch “Just Say No to Microsoft” Here you can find hundreds or reasons for all those peoples how belive that its just another opensource advocacy.

There are so many reasons to Just Say No to Microsoft—the blue screen of death, Outlook email viruses, the never-ending influx of Windows patches… And yet, with Microsoft owning the lion’s share of the desktop market, how can anyone escape the Beast from Redmond and still function? It’s not as hard as you think, and author Tony Bove is only too happy to show you how to become liberated.

Bove injects a healthy dose of humor into Just Say No to Microsoft, but his objective is sincere: to help you break your Microsoft addiction and free yourself from reliance on its ubiquitous software. After tracing Microsoft’s rise from tiny startup to monopolistic juggernaut, Just Say No to Microsoft chronicles how the company’s practices have discouraged innovation, stunted competition, and helped foster an environment ripe for viruses, bugs and hackers.

From there, Just Say No to Microsoft outlines the many available replacements for Windows and other Microsoft products, including the Office suite (Word, Excel, Outlook), Media Player, and Internet Explorer, and explains why your computing life will be better if you make the switch. With Bove’s thorough explanations of alternative operating systems like Linux and Mac and open source solutions, you can kiss the entire Windows operating system goodbye. And, Bove demonstrates how you’ll be able to interact successfully with your less-fortunate friends and colleagues who are still tied to Microsoft.

This is the sample chapter from the book Chapter 4: Slay the Word and You’ll Be Free

GNUMP3d mini HOWTO

thinkgeek — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:33:00 +0000

GNU MP3d is a pretty good streaming server for various media formats. I’ve configured it on my Ubuntu to stream some of the songs on our college intranet. This works as an addon to Apache Web server. The stream server provides web front end for the play lists. Not only that there is a advanced fucntionality to search the playlist based on title and many other tags. You can view the status of th stream server who else is conneceted to the server. There are many HTML therms which can be customised. This would be great tool for ppl who wish to run some stream server if they have broadband and a binded ip. There are so many options to control the outflow of data and limit the number of connections to the server. This is a mini HOWTO for configuring GNUMP3d on Ubuntu Breezy Badger.

You need to run apache server so get apache2 from the repositories. Get GNUMP3d from synaptic packet manager by simple search or by executing following apt-get on terminal.

root@zionmainframe:~# apt-get install gnump3d

Edit the config file as follows
root@zionmainframe:~# vi /etc/gnump3d/gnump3d.conf

Set
user = gnump3d
to
user = root

root = /var /music
to
root = /home/vijaymateti/songs (to whatever your music folder)

Restart the server
root@zionmainframe:~#invoke-rc.d gnump3d restart

Finally you got your Fav MP3 stream server on 8888 (default) port.
Here is the address of my MP3 stream server on lan http://172.16.16.150:8888

Happy Hacking,
Lunatic 2.0 \m/

Mark Shuttleworth Interview

thinkgeek — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 16:54:00 +0000

There is lot to be told about this amazing guy. Mark shuttleworth is the founder of Ubuntu Linux and the first african to reach ISS. Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He is a leding enterpreneur in south africa with number of gold and diamond mines. He could have invested his fortune on any other business but he is a man of his dreams. He got such an Amazing personality that he can be a role model for the young generation. These some of his interviews on Ubuntu. You might shift on to Mark as a new geek god.

What kinda raking do you prefer among these Geeks

Mark Shuttleworth
Richard M Stallman
Eric S Raymond
Linus Trovalds
Bill Gates

???

Top 10 reasons geeks make good fathers

thinkgeek — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 06:43:53 +0000

This is a pretty good article recently published on some geek’s blog. He points out ten reasons how geeks make good fathers. Absolutely I do agree with him geeks are the best lovers and best in every thing. There are even some points how geeks can become a good boyfriend. First you need to check this out.

1. LEGOS. The Geek is really more of a Man-Child than an adult. In their minds, they are still 10. They freakin’ still love to play with their legos, and have never grown up. I have one friend, WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS, that still has legos in his room. He doesn’t have kids. Just legos. Of course, my children love legos and Steve will lovingly spend hours playing legos with them.

2. VIDEO GAMES. Due to the whole Man-Child thing as stated in #1, the Geek loves video games. And he’s good at them too. My husband is the hit of all the kids’ friends because not only can he talk video games, he plays them too. If my children get "stuck" while playing their Gameboys and bring it to me for assistance, all I can do is feebly hold it and say " Mommy doesn’t know how to play this." Daddy, however, can beat the game.

3. MATH. A huge plus here. No matter how old they get, Steve can still help with the math homework. My ability to be of assistance is going to last another few years before *I* end up throwing the math homework across the room in disgust.

4. SMART KIDS. Smart Geeks make smart children. Although for the most part, it’s great to have really intelligent children, when your just turned two year old is using the word PREPOSTEROUS correctly, it makes for some difficult times as they get older. I literally spend a large part of my time scheming to stay one step ahead of my oldest child.

5. UP ON TECHNOLOGY. The beautiful thing about having a Geek for a parent is that you aren’t wondering what your children are doing online. You *KNOW* what they are doing online and you can limit it if necessary.

It’s fabulous peace of mind.

6. SCIENCE FAIR PROJECTS. Children of the Geeks always have the coolest science fair projects. And you don’t have to cajole your Geek into helping. You’ll find him fiddling around with the science materials whether you asked him to help or not.

7. TOY ASSEMBLY. You will never, ever have to spend six hours of your life, that you will never get back, trying to assemble some 2,000 piece toy at 3 am on Christmas Eve again. The Geek can do it in minutes flat. Usually without the directions. Whereas I have tried to assemble toys and said "Mommy has to go to the bathroom" just so I could escape and scream into my pillow in frustration, if the Geek is around, he can take it right off your hands. I now just say "Daddy is really good at this, let’s wait until he gets home."

8. GADGETS. Never again will you have to wonder what that new electronic toy is that all the kids have. In fact, your Geek will probably already own it. The problem arises when the Geek won’t share with the children. "Daddy, I want a digital camera." After the child leaves the room: "I’m not spending hundreds of dollars on a digital camera for him, he’s too young." I say "Let’s get him a cheap one." Steve looks at me as if I just said Aliens are invited to dinner. " To have it take crappy pictures?" He scoffs and walks away in disgust. No sub-par electronics in this house! How dare I suggest it.

9. SMART IS COOL. Having a Geek for a father instills the message into your children that smart is cool. They idolize Daddy. Hopefully, they’ll want to grow up to be just like him.

10. BEING IDOLIZED IS GOOD FOR YOUR GEEK. Course, you have to be careful that his head doesn’t get TOO BIG. That’s why I blog.

I hope you might agree that geeks make good fathers. Even my fater is a kinda Geek of his sciences,…He is my inspiration. He is THE BEST! Luv U Dad

Ubuntu FOX ;)

thinkgeek — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:56:00 +0000